Welles became heavily involved in negotiations that removed Cuban president Gerardo Machado from power and replaced him with rival Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada.

He was later promoted to Under Secretary of State, in which role he continued to be active in Latin American issues, but also expanded into European affairs as World War II began in Europe in 1939.

[4] Welles was forced out of government service by Secretary Hull after his enemies began to spread word of a 1943 incident in which he had propositioned two male railroad porters for sex.

A New York Times profile described him while he joined the foreign service: "Tall, slender, blond, and always correctly tailored, he concealed a natural shyness under an appearance of dignified firmness.

Negotiations managed by Welles from April 23 to 28 produced an interim government under General Vicente Tosta, who promised to appoint a cabinet representing all factions and to schedule a presidential election as soon as possible in which he would not be a candidate.

[12][14][15][16] Coolidge, however, disapproved of Welles's 1925 marriage to Mathilde Scott Townsend, who had only recently divorced the President's friend, Senator Peter Gerry of Rhode Island.

[10] James Reston summarized its thesis: "we should keep in our own back yard and stop claiming rights for ourselves that we denied to other sovereign States".

Welles promised Machado a new commercial treaty to relieve economic distress if Machado reached a political settlement with his opponents, Colonel Dr. Cosme de la Torriente, from the Nationalist Union; Joaquín Martínez Sáenz, for ABC; Nicasio Silveira, for the Revolutionary Radical Cellular Organization; and Dr. Manuel Dorta-Duque, representing the delegation of the University of Havana.

When Guas harshly rebuffed him,[20] Welles then negotiated an end to his presidency, with support from General Alberto Herrera, Colonels Julio Sanguily, Rafael del Castillo, and Erasmo Delgado after threatening U.S. intervention under the Platt Amendment and the restructuring of the Cuban army high command.

Under-Secretary Welles opposed this idea, as he later recounted:[23] I reminded the Ambassador that the President stated there was no intention on the part of his government to increase the quota for German nationals.

He said the conference had been planned in earlier hemispheric meetings in Buenos Aires and Lima and he emphasized the need for consultation on economic issues to "cushion the shock of the dislocation of inter-American commerce arising from the war" in Europe.

In the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, Germany agreed to allow the Soviet Union to occupy and annex the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

"[28][29] In a 1942 memorandum describing his conversations with British Ambassador Lord Halifax, Welles stated that he would have preferred to characterize the plebiscites supporting the annexations as "faked.

[31] A New York Times profile described Welles in 1941: "Tall and erect, never without his cane, ... he has enough dignity to be Viceroy of India and ... enough influence in this critical era to make his ideas, principles, and dreams count.

But even if Welles never becomes Secretary, he will still hold his present power: through Presidential choice, his own ability, background and natural stamina, he is the chief administrative officer of U.S. foreign policy.Roosevelt was always close to Welles and made him the central figure in the State Department, much to the chagrin of secretary Cordell Hull, who could not be removed because he had a powerful political base.

While returning to Washington by train, Welles – who was drunk and under the influence of barbiturates – solicited sex from two male African-American Pullman car porters.

[37] Cordell Hull dispatched his confidant, former Ambassador William Bullitt, to provide details of the incident to Republican Senator Owen Brewster of Maine.

Brewster, in turn, gave the information to journalist Arthur Krock, a Roosevelt critic; and to Senators Styles Bridges and Burton K. Wheeler.

While Welles vacationed in Bar Harbor, Maine,[41] "where he held to diplomatically correct silence",[42] speculation continued for another month without official word from the White House or the State Department.

[45] Continuing his career-long focus on Latin America, he said that "if we are to achieve our own security every nation of the Western Hemisphere must also obtain the same ample measure of assurance as ourselves in the world of the future."

Enforcing the decision of the United Nations was his overarching concern because it was an opportunity to establish the organization's role on the international stage that no other interest could trump.

[52] Later that year, the American Jewish Congress presented Welles with a citation that praised his "courageous championing of the cause of Israel among the nations of the world.

For example, his departure on the Île de France for Europe was noted even as he declined to comment on charges made by McCarthy about communists in the State Department.

"[58] In 1956, Confidential, a scandal magazine, published a report of the 1940 Pullman incident and linked it to his resignation from the State Department, along with additional instances of inappropriate sexual behavior or drunkenness.

[59] His son Benjamin Welles wrote of the incident in his father's biography as drunken advances to several porters at about 4 a.m. that were rejected and then reported to government and railway officials.

[60] On April 14, 1915, Sumner Welles married Esther "Hope" Slater of Boston, the sister of a Harvard roommate, in Webster, Massachusetts.

[63] On June 27, 1925, Welles married Mathilde Scott Townsend (1885–1949), "a noted international beauty" whose portrait had been painted by John Singer Sargent, in upstate New York.

[61][17][64] Until World War II, the Welleses lived on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., in the landmark Townsend Mansion, which later became the home of the Cosmos Club.

[17] Welles spent the bulk of his time a few miles outside of Washington in the Maryland countryside at a 49-room "country cottage" known as Oxon Hill Manor designed for him by Jules Henri de Sibour and built on a 245-acre property in 1929.

[73] The street adjacent to the current Embassy of the United States in Riga, Latvia, was named after Sumner Welles (as Samnera Velsa iela) in 2012.